


Milestones

by mosylu



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Seriously Toxic Levels of Fluff Going on Here, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-02-23
Packaged: 2018-03-14 08:38:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3404183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosylu/pseuds/mosylu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every couple's got 'em. And there's always one who forgets. Don't worry, it all turns out fluffy in the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. When He Didn't Notice

**Author's Note:**

> A prompt from Fiction-Over-Fact on Tumblr: "Cisco and Caitlin's first official date, and their 10th, and their one year anniversary"

Every time they told the story of their first date, Caitlin would say, “He almost missed it completely.”

Depending on how well the listener knew Cisco, they would either say, “Oh, did something come up?” or laughingly ask, “So what were you working on?”

"I was there," Cisco would say. "I just - didn’t know we were on a date."

Caitlin would shake her head disbelievingly. “I wore the green dress that always made you look at me twice. And lipstick.”

"You dress up a lot," he would argue back. "You’re way fancier than me. And okay, you always wear lipstick. See above, re: fancy-dressin’ lady."

"Not that shade of red. That was fuck-me red." (When they told the story to his family, she changed it to "kiss-me red" because omigod. His _mother_. Was _right there_. Caitlin didn’t realize that Lupe Ramon had a dirtier mind than her son until later, when the older woman told the joke about the camel, the priest, and the oil rig.)

He would shrug. “I dunno, I thought it was supposed to go with the dress.”

"Okay, what did you think when I asked you out to dinner?"

"We got dinner together all the time as just friends. It was not that rare."

"We went to diners, and places where you got a straw and a lid for your drink."

"Sometimes bars."

"Okay, granted, but that’s my point. I asked you out to dinner at a place with linen tablecloths."

"It was this Russian restaurant," Cisco would tell the listener. "And there was this soup with sour cream in it. It was actually pink, but holy crap, it was good."

"Cisco! I spent the whole meal flirting with you!"

"I kinda thought they’d given you vodka in your water glass by accident."

Somewhere around this point, the listener would be laughing too hard to hear anything more, and Caitlin and Cisco would grin at each other.

The truth was, Cisco had noticed the dress. He’d noticed the lipstick. And the restaurant. And the flirting. (And he’d known it was just water.) But he’d spent so long trying not to feel anything for Caitlin Snow that it had all seemed too good to be true. For most of the night, he'd been waiting for his clock radio to blare in his ear.

When, at the end of the night, she'd said, “Oh, for God’s sake, Cisco,” and kissed him, he had stopped expecting to wake up and kissed her back.

But Caitlin’s version was funnier.


	2. When She Didn't Get It

"Really? Just … ice cream?"

Caitlin looked up from her tablet, propped on her pajama-clad knees. “Why? What do you want to do?”

"Something bigger." Cisco sat cross-legged on her bed, still in his glasses and the Incredible Hulk boxers he’d worn to sleep in. "Cuz, you know. It’s a milestone."

"It - what?" She looked at the date, just to make sure she hadn’t missed some anniversary. Not unless five weeks was a thing, and last she’d checked it wasn’t. Besides which, when she’d mentioned in passing last week that it had been a month since their first date, he’d said, "Oh, yeah, I guess. Hey, pass me that seven-eighths hex nut, would you?"

But now he sat blinking at her as if she had suddenly professed herself unable to give him the square root of 1764. “Um. Yeah. It’s gonna be our tenth date.”

"Really?" She counted on her fingers. "Are you counting when we discovered that place with the raspberry pancakes?"

"The Blue Moon Diner?" He flapped a hand. "Continuation of date number five."

"By that logic, date number five lasted for thirty-six hours."

"Mmm. That was a good date."

She agreed, but kept herself focused on the question at hand. “Okay. So yeah, whatever we do tonight is date number ten, but what am I missing? What does it mean to you?”

"Ten. Double digits. Y’know." He shrugged one shoulder. "It means - relationship."

She blinked slowly. “What?”

"When your number of dates is still in the single digits, you’re just dating. Seeing each other. When it turns over to double digits, it’s a capital-R relationship." He considered. "Unless the number of weeks since the first date equals or exceeds the number of total dates. In that case, you’d have to determine whether you’re just, like, FWBs or casual or hanging out or what. But that’s not us because our average is two dates per week, so we beat that … easy… . " He trailed off.

Her mouth had been hanging open for at least a minute.

He shifted, ducking his head and pushing his hair behind his ears. “Unless. Is this going to be a really, really awkward conversation right now?”

"Cisco," she said, baffled. "You didn’t - ?"

"Um."

"Cisco, we spend ninety-five percent of our time together. We know more about each other than I think I know about my own family. You’ve spent the night here four times and I’ve slept at your place twice and we’ve been sexually exclusive from the beginning. When we’re not together, I can’t go to sleep until you text me and in the morning, I send you a text before I’ve even gotten out of bed. I’ve been considering this a capital-R relationship for awhile now."

"You have? You do?"

"I had no idea you didn’t." She went hot all over. "Do you do all that with every person you date?" He was such a warm and giving person, she thought with sudden horror. What if that really was par for the course?

He pulled off his glasses and started fiddling with the earpieces. “Just the ones I really wanna get to the tenth date with.”

She stared at the top of his bent head. After a moment, he looked up, his eyes wide and frank. Whatever he saw in her eyes made his shoulders relax.

Of course he didn’t. Of course this was more for him. She knew that. She’d seen him date before. A guy named Darren when he’d first moved here. Then - what had been her name? Lydia? - for about a month before the explosion. He’d never been like this with either of them.

"So," she said.

"So," he said.

She chewed her lip. “I think. I think we’re in the same place, here.”

"I think we’ve been in the same place, we’ve just called it different things."

She put her tablet aside and crawled across the bed until she could settle in the cradle of his legs. His arms came around her. She put her hands up to his face and kissed him, the kind of kiss you gave your boyfriend on a Saturday morning, in your sun-washed bedroom, in your unmade bed, while you were still in your pajamas.

That kind of kiss.

When it ended, he rested his forehead against hers and smiled. She couldn’t actually see his mouth, because they were so close, but she could see the crinkles around his eyes and feel the way his cheeks rounded under her hands. She smiled back.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. For our first capital-R relationship date, what do you think we should do? If not ice cream."

"I was actually thinking county fair."

"County … fair."

"Yeah, it’ll be awesome! We’ll eat fried things, we’ll make out on the ferris wheel, I’ll win stuffed animals for you in impressive demonstrations of skill."

She hugged him, burying her giggles in his neck. However they defined their relationship, he was still Cisco.


	3. When They Both Forgot

Cisco groaned into the bedspread. “Cait.”

"What," she said. She lay on her back, legs draped crossways over his knees. Her shoes were still on.

"Where’s m’phone."

"Don’t know."

"Where’s your phone."

"Purse maybe?"

"Where’s your purse?"

"Don’t know," she sighed.

"Damn."

"Why?"

"Phone. Phone has pizza app. Pizza app means del- deshi - delishish - yummy."

"We’d still need to get up to answer the door."

"Oh yeah. Do we have anything in the fridge?"

"Need to get up to go to the fridge."

"Oh yeah."

Caitlin groaned. “My. Entire. Body. Bruise. One big. Bruise.”

He lifted one hand and managed to pat her elbow.

"Ow."

"Sorry."

"S’okay."

Cisco burrowed his face into the bedspread and gave serious thought to never moving ever again. He wondered if they’d locked the front door.

He wondered if they’d _closed_ the front door.

Caitlin said, “Wait.”

He managed to lift his head. A miracle. “What?”

"Day. What’s the day?"

"I don’t know."

"No, seriously."

"It’s the day where a whole bunch of bad guys tried to turn Central City into a hole in the ground." He shifted and winced. His back felt like hamburger from when a guy built like a brick wall (no, an _actual brick wall_ ) slung him across a road like a kid skipping a rock across a pond. He’d whammied the meta with his best boom, but he’d still left several layers of skin on the concrete. Worst road rash ever. “And we lived through it.” Barely. Just barely.

She levered herself up onto one elbow. “No. But. No. Date. Today.”

"May … something." Yeah. He was pretty sure about the month. He crawled his fingers up and dragged a pillow from the head of the bed. He dropped his face into it. Mmm, pillow. You’re the best, pillow.

"What was yesterday?"

"May … something minus one." He stretched out, trying to reach the second pillow for Caitlin. His shoulder stated, in no uncertain terms, that this was Not Happening. Shit.

"Cisco, I think we missed our anniversary."

He rolled his head until he could squint at her. “What?”

"Our anniversary. One year. Today. Maybe yesterday. I don’t know."

"Awww," he said. Maybe if he, like, kicked it. He tried that and it fell off the bed. "Awwwwww," he said again.

"We forfeited our reservations."

He blinked. “We made reservations?”

"I did. For surprise. At Balanchine’s."

"With the linen tablecloths and the pink soup? Were you gonna wear the green dress?"

"Yeah."

"You still can put it on."

"I can’t get up," she whimpered.

"Okay. Don’t wear the green dress." He took the pillow out from under his head and shoved it in her direction. "You’re still beautiful."

She sniffed, although whether it was for the compliment or the pillow was hard to say. “Thank you.”

"It’s just a day. We’ll do it Friday. We saved the freaking city, they’ll find a table somewhere. Kay?"

"Yeah. Okay."

After another ten minutes, he felt like he could maybe move without wanting to fall on the floor and die. With monumental effort, he pushed himself to his elbows and slithered out from under her legs and off the bed.

"Cisco," she said. "Cisco, where you going?"

"Getting a thing," he said, hauling himself to his feet. Stumbling into the living room, he fumbled through the coat closet, under the winter coats (because Caitlin was a big fat present hunter no matter how much she said she wasn’t) and found the square box stuffed inside a mitten. He weaved back into the bedroom and flopped onto the bed next to her.

She propped herself up on her elbows. There was only a thin ring of icy blue around her usually warm brown eyes, and her hair was almost back to its regular strawberry blonde. Only the ends still showed white. She barely looked like the same woman who’d spent the day building walls of ice and flinging vicious frozen daggers at bad guys. “What’s that?”

"Present," he said, laying it on her stomach. "Happy anniversary."

She looked at it a moment, then back at him. “I didn’t get you anything.”

"You did surprise reservations at Balanchine’s."

"Yeah, but - "

"Still counts. Open it."

She fumbled with the paper, tossing the torn scraps over the side of the bed. “Oh,” she said softly. “Oh. Cisco.”

It was a stylized pendant in crystal, suspended from a fine gold chain. It could be a starburst or a snowflake or a nuclear explosion, or all three.

"Oh my god."

"You like it?"

"So much. Cisco. Oh my god." She fumbled with the catch until she got it open, and he held her hair out of the way as she fastened the chain around her neck. It settled perfectly on her breastbone. She cradled the pendent and they both watched it glitter.

He slid his arm around her shoulders, and she burrowed into his side. Snuggled up like that, they both fit on the pillow.

"Look at it this way," he said into her hair. "For anniversaries, we got nowhere to go but up."

She smiled and dug around under her leg. “Found something.”

"Phone!" he said happily.

"I ordered the pizza while you were in the other room. And I think by the time it gets here I’ll be able to get up to answer the door."

"I love you," he said. "I love you so freaking much."

She reached up to touch his face. “I love you back.”

FINIS


End file.
